


Let Myself Fall

by lady_ragnell



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, Older Generation, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-11
Updated: 2012-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 09:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nimueh meets an old friend, Ygraine, at the hospital where she's doing her foundation year, and finds herself wrapped up in her life and trying not to fall in love with her when she's already married to someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Myself Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Title by Rosie Thomas.
> 
> Strong language, brief mentions of infidelity, but otherwise no warnings.

Nimueh leaves the break room five minutes early, mostly for the pleasure of not having to run through the hospital for once, glaring at Balinor for good measure while she goes out, because he gets to leave two hours before she does, the bastard.

The fastest way to the Pediatric Ward is through the prenatal clinic, she’s learned since she started rotation there and one of the long-time volunteers told her, so she walks down the hall, already missing her coffee mug (she’s only had three cups and she has three hours left in a twelve-hour shift. She might not survive). There’s the usual amount of women waiting in the clinic, ready to talk to midwives or nurses or have an ultrasound, everything serene despite the fact that one of the women has a squalling toddler on her lap.

Everything is completely normal, down to the nod and smile from one of the passing midwives, until Nimueh rounds into the corridor that will connect her to the pedes ward and nearly runs down a blonde woman reading over a particularly gory chart on the stages of pregnancy. “So sorry,” she says, mostly on autopilot. “Didn’t expect to see anyone outside the waiting room, are you all right?”

“Yes, fine, no harm done,” says the woman, and when Nimueh gives her an awkward smile and turns away to head on her way, grabs her arm. “Wait, are you—Nim?”

Nimueh blinks at her, because there is a very short list of people allowed to call her that and there hasn’t been a blonde on it since … she stares some more. Eight years, but now that she’s looking, it’s got to be. “Ygraine?” Ygraine’s face lights up in answer, and she’s hugging Nimueh before she can quite process what’s going on.

“Oh my God,” says Ygraine, releasing her a few seconds later and staring just as hard as Nimueh still is. “Look at you!”

Nimueh looks her up and down, eyes catching on the flashy wedding ring and the beginnings of her belly swelling with pregnancy. Of course Ygraine is married. It would be impossible for her not to be. “Look at me?” she says belatedly. “Look at you! Have you been coming to Camelot for your prenatals all along? How have I missed you?”

“No, we just moved to London this week from the north, he got promoted, and so I’m here to meet the staff and schedule an ultrasound.” She smiles and presses her hands over her stomach, and reaches out and grabs Nimueh’s hand. “And you’re a doctor. Just like you always said.”

“Doing my second foundation year, and several years of training to go. I’m run off my feet, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“No, I imagine you wouldn’t.” Ygraine takes her other hand as well. Nimueh had forgotten how easy she could be with touch, and can’t quite get used to it. “I know this is too little, far too late, but I was so sorry to hear about your mother. I didn’t hear about the announcement until too late, and then it didn’t have any contact information for you and since you always used your mum’s e-mail I didn’t know if you would get the message I sent …”

Nimueh shakes her head. “By the time I could make enough sense of everything to realize I didn’t have your e-mail stored they’d deleted her address. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m just so glad to see you!” Ygraine squeezes her hands. “I was here thinking I wouldn’t know anyone in London, since all my school friends are still near Oxford and Tristan is mostly in Paris these days and God only knows what Agravain gets up to, I never dreamed that _you_ would be here.”

The alarm on Nimueh’s watch picks that moment to start its shrill beeping, warning her that she’s due to start rounds in two minutes. “Oh, shit,” she says. “Give me your mobile? Mine’s in my locker, but I’ll give you my number and you can text me yours and we’ll do coffee or something.”

Ygraine releases her at last and pulls out her mobile, which is a great deal newer and less beat up than Nimueh’s. Nimueh just lists her number off, as she has no idea how to do anything with a phone that could probably do more than her laptop can. “I’m not working right now, so really, call me whenever you’re free and I’ll try to arrange to see you. I want to hear everything,” Ygraine says, and kisses her on the cheek before pushing her gently off down the corridor.

Nimueh gives an awkward little wave and trots off down the hall, barely in time to the ward to escape a bollocking.

She denies for the rest of her shift that she’s still thinking about Ygraine squeezing her hands, not to mention kissing her on the cheek. Ygraine, who is married. And pregnant. And still just as gorgeous as she was when they were seventeen and Nimueh was madly in love with her.

*

That night, Nimueh turns up on Balinor’s doorstep with a full bottle of cheap vodka in a paper bag. “I will get you drunk if you listen to me moan and promise not to laugh at me too much,” she says when he opens the door.

“With a proposition like that,” he says, and lets her into his nightmare of a bedsit. His commute to the hospital is a great deal shorter than the one from her neat little one-bedroom flat, but he makes up for the better location with a flat about the size of a postage stamp, with books stacked three deep everywhere and more takeaway containers than should be strictly legal.

“You are going to get some sort of horrible food-related disease and die,” she says, because saying things like that when she visits him has become tradition.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes. I can’t have liquid supper when I worked twelve hours today. Tomorrow’s my day off, so we get to drink.”

“You’re lucky it’s my late shift tomorrow.” Balinor escorts her to the couch, kicking a stack of books out of his way as they go. Nimueh tries hard not to look at the stained and ripped upholstery as she sits down, and when he’s sat down she hands him the vodka so he can have the first swig. He eyes her sideways. “We’re drinking it straight tonight?”

“Shut up, I had a traumatic moment today. I ran into my old best friend. In the prenatal ward.”

Balinor stares blankly at her for a second, and then his mouth twitches. She glares and points at him, reminding him that drinking her booze was tacit agreement to try not to laugh at her. “Your old best friend who helped you realize you’re gay? She who gave you the penchant for blondes?”

“I hate you, why do I drink shots around you.” Balinor raises his eyebrows and the vodka bottle. “Yes, yes, whatever. The point is that I’m traumatized. Because she is still gorgeous, and she was very glad to see me, but she is also married. And pregnant.”

He pats her knee awkwardly and hands her the bottle, which is the closest he gets to showing affection. She takes a healthy gulp and tries not to cough or think about her liver while he works on his answer. “Well, you knew she was straight, right?”

“We never really got the chance to talk about it. We only saw each other a few times a year, when our parents were presenting papers or at conferences or something, mostly we e-mailed. But yes, I always figured she was straight.”

“Then why is this traumatic?”

“You are rubbish at sympathy. I should have called Alice.” She takes another swig. It doesn’t make the vodka taste noticeably better. “It isn’t traumatic because I’m in--was in love with her, not really. Especially because she didn’t know. It’s more that we were seventeen the last time we saw each other and now she’s married and starting a family and I’m not sure where to begin. I mean, with coffee or something, obviously, but--do you know what I mean?”

He takes the bottle back. “Did you start drinking before you came over?”

“No. Bastard.” She puts a hand over her eyes. “I’m just sort of in shock, I think. I’ve wondered how she’s been doing, since we fell out of contact, but it’s weird seeing it up close. And then there are all these leftover teenage feelings to deal with.”

“I don’t want to hear about your awkward teenage hormones, Nim.”

“You suck at being a straight man, you never listen to me objectify women.”

“That’s because you suck at objectifying them.” He rolls his eyes and takes another gulp of vodka. “And this one is married and pregnant, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t get excited. Besides, blondes aren’t my type.”

“Are you a eunuch? Because I sometimes wonder what your type is.” Anything to avoid the subject of Ygraine for a little while, because the longer she sits there the stupider she feels for getting upset about it. Her best friend is in town, and it shouldn’t matter that she’s married and pregnant. Balinor, thank God, fidgets at that and takes an even longer swig. Nimueh pounces on the opportunity. “There’s a story there, isn’t there? Come on, spill. We may as well be each other’s agony aunts.”

“Misery loves company?” Nimueh takes the bottle back in answer. Another shot or so’s worth and she might raid is refrigerator on the off chance he has some orange juice that hasn’t gone bad. “No, I don’t think I’ll tell you until you tell me what the real problem is.”

Since she doesn’t know quite why meeting Ygraine again is driving her to drink other than the first-proper-crush-being-married thing and Balinor knows it, that’s as effective as a “mind your own business.” Nimueh goes to get them glasses so they can both drink at the same time.

*

Three days later, Nimueh is fidgeting over a cup of horrible hospital caf coffee, on a break unless her pager goes off, when Ygraine plops into the chair across from her ten minutes late, practically glowing with happiness. “I’m sorry,” she says immediately, “they got behind in the ultrasound room and then I had to say goodbye to Uther as he’s going back to work.”

Nimueh picks out the one word from that sentence that she can focus on. “Uther?” Ygraine starts going red. “No, really, Uther? That’s your husband’s name? You’re named Ygraine, your father is an Arthurian scholar, and you married a man named Uther? Tell me that’s your horrible idea of a cute nickname.”

And just like that, Ygraine is laughing and they’re seventeen again. “I know, I know, it’s awful. If it helps, he introduced himself as John, that’s his middle name, and I almost broke up with him so Tristan wouldn’t laugh me to death and my father wouldn’t expire of happiness when I found out. It’s a family name.”

Nimueh crosses her arms. “Ygraine, what are you going to name that child?”

Ygraine is going redder by the second. “Well, we just found out the sex today. If it had been a girl, she would have been Charlotte. But it’s a boy.”

“Oh, no.” Nimueh bites down on a laugh. “No, you aren’t.”

“It’s a nice name!” says Ygraine, somewhere between defensive and grinning.

“And it’s your own fault when all his friends start calling him Wart the second they start watching _The Sword in the Stone_.” Nimueh reaches across the table and touches Ygraine’s wrist while she laughs. “Congratulations, by the way. On your son. How many people know?”

“The doctor, Uther, me, you. I imagine Uther will tell his business partner when he gets back to the office, and I’ll call Father and my brothers later. If Agravain answers his phone for once.”

“I’m honored.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to miss our coffee date, I know how busy you are.” As if that reminds her, Ygraine takes a sip from her own cup and makes a face. “Is this _meant_ to taste like tar?”

Nimueh considers that, since given the quality of the food that doesn’t go to the patients she sometimes wonders if they’re trying to make it shit. “Um, possibly. I’m immune to it by now, it’s possible I have no taste buds anymore, I should get an examination while I’m here.”

“Really, this is horrible, how often do you drink this?”

“Several times a day, but it keeps me awake so I can’t complain. Too much.” Although she may or may not be the one who started the Facebook group about it. To be fair, though, the entirety of the staff joined it within 48 hours. Including the Chief of Medicine. “Anyway, we’re here to talk about our lives, not about the coffee. For instance, you are married to a man named Uther whose last name I don’t know yet and are about to give birth to the Once and Future King in about four months?”

“Penn, I’m Ygraine Penn now, I should have said that before, sorry. And yes, about four months, how did you know?” Nimueh raises her eyebrows. “Right, trainee doctor, of course.”

“And you said you aren’t working while you’re pregnant the other day, but what will you be doing after he’s old enough? I know you always wanted to be a primary school teacher.”

Ygraine shrugs and takes another sip of her coffee, and she makes a spectacular face. “I don’t know. Uther makes plenty of money. I don’t have to work.”

The eight years of absence rear their ugly head. Nimueh still knows Ygraine’s expressions, and she knows that Ygraine isn’t very happy at the prospect of not working by how blatantly false her smile is, but after so long she has no right to interrogate her about it. “More time with Arthur, then.”

“Yes, precisely.” Her smile goes real again. “And what about you? I imagine you’re busy as anything, working here, but I’ve got my Uther. Are there any Merlins on your horizon?”

Nimueh winces. “Um, no. Not any Merlins. Not likely to be any Merlins.” Ygraine’s look melts into sympathy that Nimueh forestalls with a raise of her hand. “Actually, more likely to be Morgans. If you get my meaning.”

Ygraine’s eyes go wide. “Oh. _Oh!_ That was horribly awkward, wasn’t it? I’m so sorry, should I have known? I don’t think you ever--”

“I wasn’t out, then. It’s fine, really. I just thought I should mention now.”

“I’m glad you did. Otherwise I would have embarrassed myself inviting Tristan to London so I could have you as a sister-in-law and you would be unlikely to disappear again. His girlfriend is perfectly nice but I like you better.” Ygraine pauses. “I suppose I ought to be asking if you have a girlfriend, then.”

“No, not one of those either. I’m at the hospital far too much for all that. And when I’m not in the hospital I am either sleeping or keeping Balinor from drowning in a sea of takeaway containers.”

“Balinor?” Ygraine asks, and they actually get around to catching up properly, Nimueh talking about her time at school and all the mad but lovely people she knows at the hospital and Ygraine talking about meeting Uther in her second year of university when he was in Oxford visiting some former professors and getting married two weeks after graduation, as well as Uther’s business partner (“no, I swear, his last name really is Gorlois and he’s from Cornwall”) and his daughters, the younger of whom is just shy of a year old.

By the time her break is over, Nimueh feels like she’s properly friends with Ygraine again, and she’s somehow agreed to come to a dinner party at her house next week to meet her friends and see Tristan again, since it’s in honor of him coming back to London.

*

“Remind me again why I agreed to do this,” says Balinor, loosening his tie as Nimueh rings the doorbell at the Penns’ horribly posh townhouse.

“I would be all alone in a sea of posh people without you.”

“No you wouldn’t, you’ve got Ygraine. And what’s-his-name, her brother, Tristan.”

“Tristan is lovely, but he is also posh. And Ygraine is lovely, and also posh, and I am a bit afraid that she’s going to turn into some Stepford Wife when she’s around her husband.”

“You owe me so much cleaning,” he says, and Ygraine opens the door.

She’s wearing some sort of sparkly golden cocktail dress that probably cost more than Nimueh makes in months, and Nimueh spares one glance for the red dress she’s been wearing to every nice party she’s been to since her second year at university before being swept inside. _Stepford_ , she has time to mouth to Balinor before both of them are being fussed out of their coats as Ygraine introduces herself to Balinor, reels off the current guest list, and discusses the menu all in one fell swoop.

Nimueh and Balinor are the last to arrive, which isn’t unexpected, as they definitely live the farthest away. Ygraine takes Nimueh’s arm and Nimueh grabs on to Balinor so she doesn’t lose him, and they’re introduced around. Uther is first, of course. He’s a few years older than them, maybe thirty, and a lot more reserved than anyone Nimueh would have expected Ygraine of all people to marry. Tristan shakes hands with Balinor and then pulls Nimueh away from his sister to give her a long hug, smack her upside the head, and tell her that she isn’t to disappear again. Edward Gorlois and his wife Viv are next, and he seems pleasant enough. Viv would probably be pleasant enough as well if she hadn’t started the introduction off with a long stare at Nimueh’s dress, but she talks fondly about her daughters--Morgause, who’s going to be five soon, and little Morgana--so Nimueh can’t hate her entirely. The last guest is Tristan’s girlfriend, Helen, a voice teacher living in Paris but in London to audition for the Opera, thus prompting his visit.

They all sit down around the table after exchanging pleasantries, and Nimueh is relieved to discover that Ygraine and Uther don’t actually have an army of servants for their unreasonably large house, or at least that if they do they aren’t serving dinner. Instead, Ygraine encourages everyone to dish up their meals from the dishes spread across the table and there’s a comforting a clamor of everyone asking for the steamed beans at once and needing the salt or asking for a missing serving spoon. Nimueh is equal parts uncomfortable because she’s been eating standing over her stove or curled up on her couch ninety percent of the time for the last few years and comforted because if she closed her eyes and ignored Uther and Gorlois talking about the stock market, it would almost feel like the family dinners they had before her mother died.

The conversation, thankfully, centers around Tristan and Helen and what they get up to in Paris more than on anything else, because whenever the subject changes from that it changes to business, or occasionally Viv asking Helen something about fashion. Nimueh and Balinor spend those times sitting and fidgeting uncomfortably, which Ygraine seems to notice, judging by her frequent apologetic looks. Nimueh does her best to smile back and elbows Balinor so he stops looking like he’s being martyred.

Five minutes after everyone finishes dessert, when Uther and Edward and Viv put their heads together to talk business and Ygraine and Tristan and Helen start talking about all the places they’ve been in Paris, Nimueh makes up a blatant lie about switched shifts at the hospital and being on call in the morning. Balinor looks grateful, and Nimueh clings to that when Ygraine’s face falls and insists that they really do have to go, she’ll call Ygraine in the week and maybe she and Tristan can do coffee sometime.

“That was a rousing success,” says Balinor when they finally escape and are on their way to the Tube.

“I’m sorry,” says Nimueh, because there isn’t much to say to that.

He pats her on the shoulder. “Your Ygraine seems nice enough, and the brother and his girlfriend aren’t half bad. Just her husband’s a bit of a git, is all.”

“I am cleaning your entire hellhole,” she says, because he won’t accept thanks for restraining himself from going off on a rant about entitled blue-bloods and blatant capitalism, so that’s the closest she can get to it. This time, he squeezes her shoulder, and she knows that means he gets it.

Ygraine calls the next morning while Nimueh is eating breakfast, and interrupts her before she can get more than three words into her polite, practiced speech about how nice dinner was. “That was a bit shit, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let Uther invite Edward and Viv, I imagine you would have been more comfortable without them. I’m usually more comfortable without them, come to that.”

“Balinor has already informed me that he will not be coming next time and I need another beard,” Nimueh says instead of saying that it was quite all right.

For a second, there’s silence, and Nimueh wonders in a sudden panic if Ygraine is offended or not ready to hear jokes about her being gay yet. Before she can backtrack, though, there’s a startled laugh. “He didn’t seem very happy, no. But he did seem nice. Tristan liked him, I think. Fellow _Lord of the Rings_ fan and all.”

“It was good to see Tristan after so long. And Helen seems nice.” She spends a few seconds trying desperately to think of something nice to say about Uther. “And Uther obviously cares for you a great deal, being so excited about Arthur coming,” she settles on at last, because Uther’s a cold fish and unbearably posh but he did bring up the baby at every opportunity.

“It’s all right that you didn’t like him,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh almost inhales a bite of toast. “I didn’t either, when I first met him. Thought he was a stuffed shirt. I do hope you’ll give him another chance, he grows on a person.”

“I will.”

“Good, because you’ve no idea how nice it is to have a sane person around. Tristan and Helen aren’t here for long, and I have every intention of sneaking you on the guest list of every business event I have to go to until Arthur is born, at which point I’ll have an excuse to get out of them.”

“And what do I get out of going?”

Ygraine laughs. “The pleasure of my company, I suppose. Now, when do I get to arrange a less horribly awkward occasion?”

*

Balinor is acting shifty, and has been since a bit before their night of inadvisable vodka, and a week after the dinner party Nimueh figures out why.

It’s been a miserable shift, she’s been at the hospital for more hours than she actually cares to count and has only caught a few short naps in the on-call room and exchanged a few harried texts with Ygraine in between the series of completely shit events that has been her day. She wants nothing more than to go home and sleep for twelve hours straight, but when she clocked out, Hunith, a sweet girl who’s volunteering in the ward for her last summer before uni, was crying on the back staircase after helping with a boy who’d had to be told that his parents had died when their flat burnt down. She figures they might as well be miserable together for a bit, and after she’s changed out of her scrubs and grabbed her purse, she climbs the staircase, only to stop a landing from her goal when she hears voices up above her.

“He was just _sobbing_ ,” Hunith is saying through her tears, and Nimueh winces at the memory. It never gets easier, working with children in such awful positions, and Hunith is still new at it.

“He’s got an aunt and uncle who barely left his bedside in intensive care,” comes the soothing answer, and Nimueh almost drops her purse because that’s Balinor. Being soothing. She didn’t think he knew how to be soothing, he’s always being berated for his horrible bedside manner. “They aren’t his parents, but he’ll be taken care of, at least.”

There’s a silence long enough that Nimueh begins to wonder if she should make some noise or announce herself in case they’re about to leave, and then Hunith speaks again around her sniffles. “Thank you. You always help.”

That sounds like the beginning of the end of the conversation, and Nimueh doubts her ability to get out of the stairwell entirely without making noise, so she creeps down half a staircase and then comes up again, louder. Balinor is the one who calls down. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Nimueh.” She climbs up until she can see them, Hunith wiping her eyes and edging away from Balinor, who is trying and failing to look nonchalant. Nimueh gives him her best _you-are-not-getting-away-with-this_ look. It’s hard to intimidate Balinor, as he practices three different sorts of martial arts (she sometimes wonders if he actually sleeps), but she can sometimes manage it. “I thought I’d come and see how you were doing, Hunith, but Balinor seems to have everything under control.”

“You’re lovely for wanting to help, though,” says Hunith, and pats the step above her. “Do you want to sit down? You were there for it too, we can have a pity party.”

Part of her wants to drag Balinor away and ask exactly what he thinks he’s doing, flirting with an eighteen-year-old, but most of her is miserable enough after her shift not to care, so Nimueh climbs up the rest of the way and joins them on the stairs, prodding Balinor on her way so he knows he won’t get away without having some sort of conversation about whatever’s going on. “You handled it well,” she says to Hunith. “The nurses were impressed.”

Hunith just nods, and they spend the next fifteen minutes talking about everything but little Edwin peering out from his mess of bandages and asking why his mum wouldn’t come. “I’ve got to go,” says Hunith at last. “I’m signed up to be here until three, and I don’t want to let anyone down.”

“I should buy some semblance of food before I go home and get some sleep,” says Nimueh, standing up and brushing the dust off her pants. “Balinor?”

“I’m on my long break. I’ll walk you to the door, Nim. It was good to talk to you, Hunith, I hope the rest of your afternoon goes better.”

Hunith smiles at him, so starry-eyed it’s almost painful, and gives them both a wave before climbing the stairs towards the ward. Nimueh waits until she’s out of earshot before turning to Balinor and smacking him on the arm. “She’s eighteen!”

Balinor crosses his arms. “Nothing’s going on. I’m not being a creep, and I won’t break her heart, Nim, I do understand how young she is. She hasn’t even been to university.”

She recognizes the expression on his face, even though she wishes she didn’t. It’s the same one she remembers from the beginning of last year, when he talked about his long-term girlfriend, who then proceeded to shatter his heart into a million pieces when Balinor spent more time at the hospital than with her and she slept with someone else. Hunith certainly isn’t mean-spirited, but she is young. “I’m more worried about you getting your heart broken,” she says.

“Hunith isn’t Karen.”

“I know. I like her a lot better than I liked Karen, too. But she’s eight years younger than you are, and she’s probably not going to want to start a family quite yet. You’re getting there.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll deal with it.”

“It’s hard to stay in love with someone you fall in love with when you’re eighteen,” says Nimueh, and winces because that was crueler than she meant to be.

“You’ve managed it,” he replies, and both of them freeze. She can’t really tell him that was uncalled-for, because she’s overstepping just as much, but she won’t forgive him instantly either. Ygraine is her friend, and she’s keeping it that way; if that means ignoring any feelings she has to the contrary, so be it.

It takes a few seconds to get her voice back. “Right. I’m going home now. Hope the rest of your shift is uneventful.”

Balinor just gives her the hint of a nod and they walk down a few flights of steps in silence before he splits off to go back to his floor and she continues down to go out the side entrance of the hospital.

*

Somehow, Nimueh manages to get herself talked into going to a business party that one of the PenGor Industries investors (and really, that’s a horrible name for a company) is throwing a few days later, after another long shift and no significant contact with Balinor. She gives in to her pride and spends more than she cares to think about from her savings on a dress that she can actually wear to these sorts of parties, since Ygraine seems to have her heart set on having Nimueh around, and doesn’t bother asking Balinor or anyone else to come along to protect her.

That turns out to be a good thing, since Ygraine grabs her arm the second Nimueh makes it into the coat check, exclaiming over her dress and smiling at the bouncer who almost hadn’t let her in. “I’m so glad you’ve arrived. Uther is already off talking to absolutely everyone and I don’t really feel like talking about the new line from Versace tonight.”

“Why do you go to these things, if your date abandons you the second you get here?”

Ygraine shrugs. “It’s expected, I suppose. And besides, you’re my date. Unless you pull, in which case I’ll go back to my husband and listen to him go on about how soon Arthur will be the heir to a business empire.”

Nimueh looks around the party. There are plenty of women, and plenty of them are gorgeous, but most of them are attached to men who are having very serious conversations with each other, and the women who are actually taking part in the conversations look very serious and are wearing conservative, sharp-lined dresses and certainly don’t look like they’re looking for company, even if they are gay. “Probably won’t be pulling, so you’re stuck with me. And is Uther really saying that? Is he going to make the poor boy pull a folder of stocks out of a stone when he comes of age?”

Ygraine bursts out laughing. “God, I hope not. Can you imagine?” She bites her lip. “My father is going to constantly give the poor boy swords and round tables and I don’t even know what else for every holiday even if he turns out to hate sport or business or anything else the Once and Future King ought to be interested in.”

“It’s your own fault, but it’s not too late to change his name. What about Henry, if you’re insisting on his being named after a king? Or Edward, even, Uther seems the sort to name his child after his business partner.”

Hand on her stomach, Ygraine wrinkles her nose. “Henry? Who is named Henry these days? And certainly not, on Edward. I want him to be his own person.”

“And with a name like Arthur considering his parents’ names, being his own person will be terribly easy.”

“I’ll make sure he is, though. Even if he doesn’t want to be part of his father’s company.” She lowers her voice. “Though don’t spread it around, that’s the basest of blasphemy if you ask most of these men.” Ygraine rubs her stomach with the same smile Nimueh saw a hundred times on her gynecology rotation. “He feels like an Arthur, though. I’ll bet he’ll kick like anything.”

“Arthur it is, then,” says Nimueh, because there’s no arguing with that.

Ygraine beams at her, and then takes her arm and starts introducing her around. Most of the men don’t bother to talk to them for very long, which annoys Nimueh more and more every time it happens, but a few are willing to converse for more than a few seconds--Olaf, whose wife can’t be more than nineteen but who coos over her as if he honestly does care for her, for instance, and Godwyn, whose wife actually makes sensible conversation. Nimueh realizes that she’s mentally referring to these women as “so-and-so’s wife” and has to have a glass of wine to console herself for being so incredibly anti-feminist.

It’s hard, she discovers as Ygraine looks pained and makes conversation with yet another woman about something going on in the House of Lords or a new line of shoes or, with the less awful ones, preparations for Arthur’s birth, to not be anti-feminist when the whole assembly makes it so _easy_. Really, the whole thing feels like a parody of a 50s film, and while Nimueh is sure most of the people really aren’t as vapid as they seem, they don’t act it in each other’s company. It also doesn’t escape her notice that well over half the women in the room are between twenty and thirty, and that well over half of those are blonde, and after that and another encounter with Olaf doting on his bride it doesn’t take long to think the words “trophy wife.” And then after that it takes uncomfortably little time for her to look at Ygraine and remember that she’s blonde, and lovely, and several years younger than her husband. _Shit,_ , she thinks, and hauls Ygraine off to a corner of the room where they can have conversations like normal people.

Uther comes and gets them eventually, and Nimueh makes a point of being polite and friendly and very carefully not thinking the words “trophy wife” ever again while he shows them around and tells anyone who will listen about Arthur being the future king of PenGor Industries.

Even Ygraine looks pained at that.

*

“So, I was a bitch, and it absolutely sucks not talking to you,” says Nimueh as she sits down next to Balinor in the break room.

“You were,” Balinor agrees, because he holds grudges. She hands him the cup of fancy coffee from the café across the street even though she technically shouldn’t have left the hospital. He glowers at it before taking the peace offering. “I was out of line too,” he says at last, grudgingly.

She makes a noise that isn’t quite assent, because out of line he may have been, but he was also right. They let a few minutes pass in silence. “So. You and Hunith.”

“Maybe. Or maybe not. I am aware of her age, no matter what you think.”

“She … seems to want to. At least I got that impression when I saw the two of you.”

He elbows her. “So what the hell was all that about worrying about my heart the other day?”

She suspects that giving a proper answer is going to lead to him going off in a snit again, but there’s no use lying to him, either. She forgoes the long answer about people changing after they’re teenagers, since he’ll just bring up Ygraine again, and uses the short one. “You’re a forever kind of person, Balinor, and not everyone is so quickly, that’s all. Aren’t I allowed to worry?”

“You are. But the way I see it, I’m in a better position than you are right now.” Nimueh flinches, and waits for Balinor to remind her that being in love with a married, pregnant, straight woman is not a good choice and she might want to do something before it turns from a rekindling of teenage affection into something worse. Instead, he sighs and drinks more of his coffee. “How was that party the other night?”

“Fine, once we stopped talking to anyone but each other.” Nimueh takes a sip of her own coffee, which is from the break room coffee maker and doesn’t taste anywhere near as appetizing as Balinor’s smells. “She’s his trophy wife, isn’t she?”

Balinor’s never seen the sense in sugar-coating things. “Probably, yes.”

Nimueh leans back on the couch and moans. “I feel as though I ought to be doing something about it, but I really can’t. If they weren’t married, or even if she weren’t pregnant, I would mention it, but she really does love him and I think he loves her, and it’s really not any of my business anyway.”

“Do you think she doesn’t know?”

That brings Nimueh up short. Ygraine isn’t stupid, after all, and she must see the signs, especially with Uther not wanting her to work. However, she’d also like to think Ygraine isn’t stupid enough to _stay_ if she really is a trophy wife. “I think she thinks he cares about her,” she manages eventually. Balinor just snorts. “Either way, like I said, it isn’t any of my business.”

“You want it to be.”

“Remember how five minutes ago we tacitly agreed to stop fighting? I like that agreement. It means I don’t have to go lurk in Alice’s office on my breaks any longer. Especially as she’s pretending not to flirt with Dr. Gaius from Cardiology and it’s really terribly difficult to stomach. They act more like teenagers in love than you and Hunith do.”

He just keeps drinking his coffee and ignores her brilliant conversational deflection because he’s like a dog with a bone about some things. “You’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later.”

“We’re just barely getting to be friends again, and seeing how much we’ve changed. Once I’ve gotten to know her again, chances are I’ll stop crushing on her. Easy.” Except for how it wasn’t even when they fell completely out of contact after Nimueh’s mother died, and how she always sympathizes a little bit too much with the idiots who sigh and say that you never quite forget your first love. But she’s ignoring that.

“You said the other day that I’m a forever kind of guy,” says Balinor, and she must look horribly miserable after that, because he actually stops. Neither of them attempts another sally for a few seconds, and then Balinor sighs. “So, your flat for an _Eastenders_ marathon tonight? I could use some trash.”

Nimueh tries not to show her relief, though she suspects she fails at that. “Sure, sounds like a plan. Sure you don’t want to go to yours, though? Don’t want you having to get the Tube at two in the morning again.”

“If we go to my flat, we’ll end up cleaning again, so we’re going to yours. You’re cooking, because you’re a bitch and I’m going to get scurvy if I keep eating nothing but takeaway.”

“Then you get to do the dishes because you’re a bastard,” she returns, and leans into him a bit. “Our lives would be a whole lot simpler if I weren’t gay and we could just be in love, wouldn’t they?”

“Maybe. But we would also kill each other pretty quickly.” Nimueh considers that for a moment before conceding his point. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go back on shift. I’ll come round to your place around seven. Thanks for the coffee, Nim.” And with that, he ruffles her hair and walks out of the break room.

*

For the next month, life falls into a pattern. Nimueh works absolutely horrendous hours at the hospital and reminds herself that she only has a few more months until her foundation years are over (she blatantly ignores the fact that after that she still has quite a lot of training to do before she can be a proper consultant. Balinor is lucky he only wants to be a GP). She and Balinor work their way steadily through his boxed set of _Eastenders_ (she does not ask why he has a boxed set. She suspects she doesn’t want to know) while they very carefully don’t talk about Ygraine and Hunith. And, once or twice a week, Nimueh ends up at some business dinner or cocktail party at Ygraine’s side, trying not to hate everyone but Ygraine for being posh and sexist and talking about nothing but business.

It’s not all bad, though. She likes being Ygraine’s “plus two,” as Ygraine affectionately calls her, because it means she suddenly has her best friend back, and they spend more time talking to each other than to anyone else at the parties, except for the one circuit of the room Ygraine makes with Uther every time. They also tend to meet for coffee as often as they can, and with more of Balinor’s attention being taken up by the thing with Hunith that he’s not talking about, it’s good to have someone she can talk to about things besides the hospital. They make ridiculous plans for Arthur, about how he’s going to have a primary school teacher called Merlin who he’ll learn absolutely everything from, and how he’s going to sleep with Uther’s goddaughter Morgana someday and knock her up (“oh God,” says Ygraine when Nimueh brings that one up, “I’m supposed to have at least sixteen years before I start worrying about that, I’m sure of it”), and how he’ll be the PM someday, or marry into the royal family.

The problem is that Nimueh and Uther cordially hate each other. Most of the time, it doesn’t bother her, even though she knows it bothers Ygraine. Most good friends aren’t fond of each other’s significant others, and most significant others aren’t fond of said friends—they’re simply too jealous of the person’s time. (She ignores the fact that she adores Hunith, and is fond of both Alice and Dr. Gaius. She prefers not to have her points disproved.) Sometimes, though, she admits at least to herself that it goes a bit deeper than that, with her and Uther. When she’s around him and his associates, and sees the way he acts with Ygraine, she can’t stop thinking about that first party, and the words “trophy wife,” and she hates him for turning Ygraine into that when she’s so much better than it, when she doesn’t even realize that’s what she is. She doesn’t know for sure why Uther hates her beyond the usual, but she suspects it has something to do with the way she brings up possibilities for teaching and tutoring jobs for Ygraine whenever she can. And maybe he’s a bit more observant than his wife and has figured out that Nimueh has feelings for her.

“I don’t understand why you two can’t just get along,” Ygraine wails over coffee the morning after Nimueh and Uther spent a whole night trading barbs as sweetly as they could.

Nimueh just barely manages not to say _Because he’s an arsehole and I try not to associate with arseholes._ Especially as that’s a lie, because Balinor is frequently an arsehole. “We just rub each other the wrong way, that’s all.”

“Tristan doesn’t really like him either,” says Ygraine mournfully. “I know he’s hard to get to know, but he’s really not that bad, I promise.”

“Why do I have the feeling you spent breakfast asking him why he can’t get along with me when Tristan likes me just fine?”

“Lies.” Ygraine grins. “He left before breakfast this morning, so I’ll have to do it at dinner.”

Nimueh groans. “Please don’t. Really, it’s not the end of the world if we don’t like each other. I’m not going to like you any less if I spend time with you alone instead of with both of you.”

Ygraine looks down and rubs her stomach, a habit she’s developed over the past few weeks as Arthur is beginning to move a bit now. “If you say so. I just want so much for you to get on, and I know it’s foolish. Just—I want you in my life as much as possible, now that we’ve found each other again, and he’s my husband, so I wish I didn’t have to keep you separate. Especially with Arthur on the way. I fully expect you to spoil him rotten.”

“Just try and stop me. I am going to be an excellent honorary aunt.”

“Yes, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that.” Nimueh nods encouragingly. “I know you aren’t religious in the least, but I’d love to have you as his godmother. Tristan’s the godfather. Uther’s a bit miffed that I didn’t pick Edward and Viv, but he’s happy enough about the baby coming that I talked him into it pretty easily.”

Nimueh blinks back an absolutely stupid set of tears. “Of course I will, especially as you don’t seem to expect me to catechize the poor thing. I’d be more likely to hang crystals in his window, at that.”

“I don’t really care, as long as you say yes.”

Nimueh reaches across the table and puts her hand over Ygraine’s. “Like I said. Of course I will. And it gives me an excuse to spoil Arthur rotten.”

*

Balinor decides, when some freak of scheduling gives them both two days off in a row, that they need to go clubbing. Since Balinor hates clubbing, Nimueh is confused by this until approximately thirty seconds after they walk through the doors of _Isle of the Blessed_ , when Hunith bounces up to them in a sparkly top, already half-drunk. “You are going to the special hell,” Nimueh informs him.

“You can’t quote that at me, I introduced you to the show. Good evening, Hunith.”

“The special hell,” she reiterates darkly, and kisses Hunith on the cheek before going to the bar, as she suspects she’ll need to be drunk to spend a night being Balinor’s unwitting wingwoman.

Balinor and Hunith, it transpires, seem to have no plans for the evening besides staring deeply into one another’s eyes and occasionally ordering a drink, but both of them act horrified when Nimueh says she might go home, so she texts Ygraine in hopes of commiseration and goes to the dance floor. Everything on the floor is a haze of Lady Gaga and far too many men’s hands all over her, but it’s been a while since she was out dancing so she ignores that and moves to the beat.

At least until one man grabs her ass and gets pretty insistent about not letting go. She thinks about kicking up a fuss, but it isn’t exactly his fault she likes women, and she’s had a few too many cocktails in between dances, so she half-turns and shouts “Sorry, I’m a lesbian,” over the music.

That, as she might have predicted, brings titters, and the man who was trying to dance with her calls her a cocktease and goes to grind on some girl who looks barely legal. Nimueh shrugs, and is about to go get another drink so everyone will have a little time to remember what she looks like when there’s a throaty laugh from behind her. “Are you actually, or were you just trying to get him to fuck off?” a woman asks when Nimueh turns around.

“Not really any of your business, is it?”

The woman tosses her hair over her shoulder and smiles. “Possibly not, but I’ve been checking you out all night, and I sure wasn’t expecting to meet anyone gay in this club, so if you are, I thought you might want to dance.”

Nimueh eyes her up and down, since the woman is pretty blatantly checking her out as well and turnabout’s fair play. “Sure, let’s dance. I’m Nimueh.”

“Catrina.”

From there, the night gets _much_ better. Nimueh dances with Catrina for the next five or six songs, and when Catrina leans in to suggest they get out to somewhere more private, Nimueh smiles and says her place is close before waving to Balinor and Hunith, who are still sitting at the bar staring soulfully at each other and not doing much else.

She has no illusions that she and Catrina are going to be anything at all, but it’s been a long time since Nimueh had so much as a date, so she’s perfectly happy to bring her up to her flat, which is a bit of a mess, and ignore the memory of Balinor’s raised eyebrows as she left the club to tumble Catrina into bed and do everything she’s been missing out on for months. When they’re both worn out, she manages to mumble something about Catrina staying the night, and takes Catrina’s responding grunt as assent before drifting off to sleep.

In the morning, she wakes to the suspicion that she must have swallowed roadkill at some point in the night and someone knocking on her door. She wiggles out from under Catrina, who apparently is a sleep cuddler and who also has absolutely awful morning breath. And snores. It doesn’t make her list of Top Five Regrettable Nights, at least, though perhaps the Top Twenty if she cared to count that far.

Nimueh staggers out of her bedroom, grabbing her bathrobe on the way, and catches a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror as she goes to open the door, smudged makeup and messy hair and a truly embarrassing love bite that absolutely everyone at the hospital is going to judge her for. She spends a second praying that it’s Balinor at the door, since she has ammo on him in the form of the cow eyes he keeps making at Hunith, before fumbling it open to find Ygraine on the other side with a wide smile and two cups of coffee. She blinks several times, but it’s still Ygraine. “Good morning,” she manages belatedly. “Have I missed a coffee date?”

Ygraine’s smile fades a bit. “I just thought, since you texted last night sounding unhappy, maybe I’d come over so you could complain about it. I suppose I should have waited a few hours, but I assumed you made an early night of it.”

“I was up late, sorry, I look horrible, I know. Please, come in, we’ll do coffee.” And she’ll figure out some way to explain Catrina.

“If you’re sure.”

Nimueh, in lieu of answer, takes Ygraine’s arm and leads her into her kitchen. She’s been to Ygraine’s house several times now, and it’s feeling a bit more natural, but this is only the second time Ygraine’s been to her flat. “It’s good to see you. I was afraid with Balinor abducting me I wouldn’t have time to see you.”

“Yet another reason I’m glad I came. I brought you coffee, by the way.”

“You are an angel,” declares Nimueh, and snatches it out of her hands to take a sip.

Catrina, because this is Nimueh’s life and nothing can be easy, of course, chooses that moment to wander out of the bathroom, in clubbing clothes that look garish and all wrong in the light of day. Ygraine’s mouth drops open and she chokes on her coffee, and Nimueh wishes the floor would open up and swallow her. “Morning, Nimueh,” says Catrina. “Morning, whoever you are. I’ll just be on my way, shall I? Thanks for a good night.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—I mean, if I was interrupting, I can just …” Ygraine trails off and looks at Nimueh helplessly.

“I’m just off on my walk of shame, love, no need to get worried,” says Catrina, waves at Nimueh, and walks out before Nimueh can come anywhere close to mustering an answer to that.

A long, awkward silence follows. “You could have warned me,” Ygraine says at last.

“Didn’t precisely have the time. Um, sorry. It had … been a while. Since I had a date or. Anything.”

“Ah. Right.” Ygraine is bright red, and Nimueh suspects she’s not any better. “So I suppose I won’t ask if the whole night was horrible, then?”

“It wasn’t anything, really. I doubt she even left her number.” Nimueh shrugs. “Not much to say about it. How are you this morning?”

Ygraine lets her change the subject, but Nimueh keeps catching her looking at her oddly during gaps in their conversation for the rest of the morning, before Balinor calls and she has to go off to mock him for mooning over Hunith and be mocked in return.

*

Ygraine is seven months pregnant when she calls Nimueh up one night full of good news. “Edward has a summer cottage in Cornwall, and Uther wants to take me there for a week. Says he knows I’ve been lonely with him working so much since we’ve come to London and wants to reconnect.”

“That sounds lovely,” says Nimueh, even though she suspects it means Ygraine is going to spend the week staring at the countryside miserably without much phone reception while Uther does business by e-mail and mostly ignores her. “When are you going?”

“The day after tomorrow. With me so far along, he doesn’t want to risk being away from London as I get closer to my date.”

“Quite smart. I’ll miss you, but I hope you have a lovely time.” Things are less awkward by the day, so she risks a little bit of honesty. “And I’m glad you’re having the chance to reconnect. You don’t always seem … happy. With the way things are.”

“This wasn’t really what I signed on for,” Ygraine says quietly. “Things have been different, especially since I got pregnant and we moved to London. I wouldn’t trade Arthur for anything, but I’m hoping that this week will get things back to how they were. I want to talk to Uther about working, if nothing else. You’ve inspired me there.”

Nimueh swallows. “I’m glad I have. But I hope you two can work things out this week. How was he before you came to London?”

“He still worked a lot, but when he wasn’t he spent more time with me. These days it seems like Viv and the girls see him more than I do. He’s so fond of little Morgana, and I can’t blame him, she’s sweet for all she can’t sleep a night through, but I hope he’ll stay home more once I have Arthur.”

“He probably will. And at least you know he’s good with children.”

“You’re a better person than I am,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh nearly chokes on her own spit because that is certainly not anything she ever thought she would hear. Ever. “If I were you and I disliked Uther so much I would be finding any excuse to break the two of you up, but you’re encouraging me to fix things.”

“It’s your life. But don’t worry, if you ever hate one of my girlfriends you have the right to say so.”

Ygraine’s tone is a little lighter when she answers. “Then you’ll forgive me for saying that I’m really glad you and Catrina aren’t dating? I only saw her for a few seconds but she didn’t look like the sort of woman I would expect you to date. Not that I’ve actually seen you date anyone.”

“Who has time to date? Not me. And I wouldn’t have dated Catrina. That just sort of happened.”

“Things always do,” says Ygraine. “Next time, you ought to tell me all about it. I’m an old married lady now, I have to live vicariously.”

“And you’ll have to tell me all about your time in Cornwall, as I am too busy at the hospital and have to live vicariously through _you_. Except don’t tell me about the sex, because I love you dearly but I don’t want to hear about Uther’s cock.” Ygraine chokes on a laugh. “Seriously. You may think I’m joking, but I’m not. I won’t talk about Catrina’s lady parts if you don’t talk about Uther in the same sentence as sex.”

“I really don’t mind if you want to.”

Nimueh snorts. “It’s great that you’re fine with me being gay, but you really don’t have to put yourself out that way. I’ve got Balinor to check women out with anyway.”

“No, I really don’t mind,” says Ygraine, but she changes the subject right after, to what she should pack and what sights she’ll see in Cornwall (Nimueh doubts that there are many sights there. Besides rocks and the ocean, that is), so Nimueh lets the subject drop and pretends to be happy that she’s going off to rekindle her marriage.

*

Nimueh and Balinor are having a movie marathon (consisting of two movies, because both of them have to be up in the morning) when her phone rings. She looks at it automatically, since the hospital might be calling her in for an emergency, and blinks when she sees Ygraine’s name, because she’s meant to be in Cornwall for three more days. “I’ll make it quick, just want to make sure that she and the baby are okay,” she says, and picks up the phone. “Hello, there. Couldn’t wait a few more days to tell me about all the fascinating scenery?”

She gets a sob in return. Then, wavery: “Nim?”

“Shit.” She sits up straight and makes an apologetic face at Balinor, who raises his eyebrows but puts the movie on pause. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Are you hurt? Is something wrong with the baby?”

“No. No, he’s kicking something fierce, but he’s all right.” Ygraine laughs, shakily, and it turns into another sob. “Can I—I’m sorry, I’ve no right to ask this and you’re probably working in the morning and it’s nearly midnight, but I’m on a train and I’ll be in Victoria Station in about half an hour. Could you come and get me?”

“Yes. Of course.” _Sorry,_ , she mouths to Balinor, who’s already shrugging into his jacket. He doesn’t even roll his eyes, so apparently it sounds serious to him as well. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Can you tell me what the matter is?”

“I’m calling you a taxi,” whispers Balinor, and takes out his phone.

“I—I don’t. I can’t get divorced, I’m having a baby in two months.”

Nimueh just barely manages not to screech her answer. “Divorced?” Balinor almost drops his phone while he waits for someone to answer him. “What the hell happened? Did he … did he hurt you, Ygraine?”

“No, he—Morgana.”

“What about Morgana? Is she hurt?”

“Morgana is _his_ ,” says Ygraine, and starts sobbing again.

Nimueh sits down hard and shakes her head when Balinor gives her a quizzical look. He holds up both his hands and then points at the phone. Ten minutes. She nods and mouths her thanks as he lets himself out the door. “His daughter? He slept with his business partner’s wife?” She mentally tallies how old Morgana is with how long he and Ygraine have been married. “Less than six months after his wedding?”

“A lot. He slept with her a lot, and I think he still is, except I didn’t ask.”

“He told you that? Is he drunk?” She gets up off her couch and finds a jacket, even though she should probably put on pants that aren’t printed with hippogriffs that she stole off a university girlfriend. She slips on her shoes and stuffs her keys in her pocket before starting down towards the street.

“No, he just … said it, after dinner in the cottage, like it was something I ought to have known already. God, I don’t even know how it came up, but then all of a sudden he was saying he’s very fond of me, like that was some sort of consolation.”

It takes a second for Nimueh to be able to get anything out around her building rage. “He didn’t even apologize?”

“I don’t know if he even realizes … Nim, why did he even marry me, if he doesn’t love me? Where’s the sense in marrying someone just to keep carrying on an affair with someone else?”

Nimueh hates him, and it’s everything she can do not to go off into a spitting rage. The only thing that stops her is the fact that Ygraine needs her, and she doesn’t need to be told he only married her because she’s pretty and a duke’s great-granddaughter, she needs crisis response. “I don’t know. Does he know where you’ve gone?”

“Maybe by now, I’m not sure. I left when he fell asleep, but he might have woken up any time.”

“What do you think he’ll do?”

Ygraine laughs, but it sounds horrible and off across the line. “Probably nothing. Maybe call me and tell me to come home so we can discuss it like adults. He won’t want to make a scene.”

Nimueh fidgets on the street, waiting for her taxi to come in view and trying not to think about how expensive it’s going to be to get across London and back in one. “You’ll stay with me until you figure out what you want to do, and I won’t let him across my threshold unless you say you want him there. Although in that case I reserve the right to break his nose first.”

“Didn’t you take the Hippocratic Oath?” Ygraine probably doesn’t mean her to hear her blowing her nose, so Nimueh pretends it didn’t happen. “And I can’t impose like that, your flat is the size of a postage stamp. You don’t even have an extra bed.”

“So we’ll share a bed. Or if you’re uncomfortable with that, I’ll sleep on my sofa for a while, until we figure something else out.”

“I’m not uncomfortable with it in the least, but I still can’t let you do that. You work so much, you don’t need to be sharing sleeping quarters with a pregnant woman who can’t make it through the night without having to get up three or four times.”

“We’ll figure it out. You’re staying tonight, at least, and I won’t hear any argument against that.” As if by magic, a taxi pulls up the curb and she nearly dives into it, telling the driver to take her to the station of Ygraine trying to object and say something polite. “No arguing. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, but I really don’t mind. It’s not like I have a lot of guests over or anything. You can stay as long as you want, as long as you don’t mind Balinor coming over and throwing popcorn at my television on occasion.”

Ygraine sounds just a bit calmer when she answers. “I suppose it would be silly to say no.”

“Right, exactly. Are you going to be okay if we hang up for a bit? I’ll see you at the station.”

“I’ll be fine. You do whatever you need. And thank you.”

*

Nimueh is half-asleep by the time she meets Ygraine on her train platform, but she wakes right back up again at the sight of her best friend looking a horrid mess, suitcase dragging behind her. Instead of saying any of the things she ought, Nimueh just opens her arms up and lets Ygraine walk into them and spends five minutes saying soothing nonsense while the other passengers empty off the platform.

“Come on,” she says when she feels the tell-tale shake in Ygraine’s shoulders. “Let’s get a taxi back to my place and put you to bed. I’m at the hospital from eight to midnight so we probably won’t be able to talk until the next day, but you’ve at least got someplace to be while you figure out what you’re doing.”

Ygraine pulls back and hooks her arm through Nimueh’s when Nimueh tries to take her suitcase. “I would try to argue that you’re doing far too much for me already, but I doubt you would listen, so I’ll just thank you for being so wonderful.”

“Don’t thank me yet, I am going to be a horrible person for most of tomorrow and I imagine I’ll come home grouchy if you’re still awake then.” She hides a yawn, not very well, and leads them back out of the station. She didn’t tell the cab she had before to wait for her, but there’s luckily a few left in the bank doing pickups of other late-night passengers, so she flags one of them down and pushes Ygraine in.

Both of them doze the whole way back to Nimueh’s flat, but Ygraine rouses enough to pay over Nimueh’s sleepy objections when the cab gets them there. Between them, they manage to get Ygraine’s suitcase up the stairs and into her flat, where they stand awkwardly. “Right,” says Nimueh, collecting her wits, “I’ve got to get up in the morning, so let’s go to bed. Feel free to use the bathroom to clean your teeth and change, I’ll make sure there’s nothing unspeakable on the floor in my room and text Balinor to let him know we’re home safe.”

“You can’t sleep on the couch, really, you really can’t, I feel horrible and you’ve got to work in the morning, you need proper sleep.”

“So we’ll share the bed. It’ll be a tight fit, but we’ve had worse at sleepovers when we were younger.”

Ygraine thankfully stops objecting at that, just gives Nimueh a watery smile and a kiss on the cheek before shutting herself in the bathroom. Nimueh calls herself ten kinds of horrible for letting her heart flutter at that when Ygraine is hurting, texts Balinor ( _obviously living in a soap opera no other explanation_ ), and throws most of the dirty laundry on her floor into her hamper just in time for Ygraine to come in. “The bed’s plenty big enough for both of us, even though I’m a boat at the moment.”

“You aren’t a boat, you’re just quite pregnant and glowing, rather. Go to sleep whenever, I’m going to wash my face and get some rest myself.”

Ygraine is asleep when Nimueh comes back in the room, curled up on her side and facing away, and Nimueh climbs into bed beside her, careful to keep her limbs to herself even though she’s used to sprawling, and is asleep in seconds.

Nimueh wakes up when Arthur kicks her hand, hard. This is, she realizes when she blinks her eyes open, because she’s somehow ended up spooning Ygraine in the night and her hand is clasped firmly on Ygraine’s stomach. She extricates herself as quietly as she knows how and rolls over to look at her clock. 7:15. “Shit, fuck,” she hisses, and scrambles out of bed without worrying about Ygraine, pulling on the first underclothes and set of scrubs she finds and packing up everything she needs in under ten minutes. She looks a fright, she’s exhausted, and she’s going to be ready to gnaw off her own arm by the time she has time for food, but at least she’ll be on time for her shift.

She checks in and staggers in for her first set of rounds with seconds to spare and a disapproving look from the head nurse as she speed-walks through the pediatric ward, and never manages to get ahead for the rest of the day. There’s an assessment she’d nearly forgotten about in all the excitement, which she passes more by luck than skill because she’s so tired she can hardly see straight. She spends the day catching cat-naps on the break room couch when she can except for the break when Hunith catches her and spends ten minutes extolling Balinor’s many virtues and then fussing over her endlessly when she catches her yawning before Nimueh has to go running for a code.

By midnight, she’s exhausted and snappish and her supervisor sends her home fifteen minutes early, so Nimueh falls asleep on the Tube on her way home and just barely wakes up in time for her stop.

When she gets home, though, there’s a note on her table saying there’s dinner in the fridge, and she devours the chicken and vegetables cold before stripping out of her scrubs (her second set of the day, after a little girl vomited on her) and scrambling in the dark of her bedroom for something to put on for bed. Ygraine is sleeping when she gets in, or at least doesn’t speak to her, and Nimueh doesn’t even remember pressing her face into her pillow before she falls asleep.

*

“Nim? I’m sorry, I hate to wake you, but you haven’t got an alarm set and I don’t know if you’ve got to get up.”

Nimueh peels her head off her pillow and can’t even be ashamed that she was drooling in the night, and finds Ygraine crouched beside her bed, looking tousled and tired but not as if she’s been crying again. “What time is it?”

“Ten. I imagine your phone would be ringing if you’re late …”

“Not working today.” She manages to drag herself up into some semblance of a sitting position, stretching the kinks out of her back. “Thanks, though. I’ll start putting my schedule on the refrigerator or something, if you stay, so you don’t have to fret.”

Ygraine bites her lip and straightens up, hands at the small of her back. “Yes, I thought we might talk about that now that we aren’t falling down of exhaustion. Do you want some coffee and breakfast before that?”

“Shower first, then coffee, then maybe food. But mostly the shower, I smell like hospital, it’s a wonder you didn’t kick me out of bed.”

Ygraine just shrugs and gives her an unreadable look. “I’ll leave you to it, then, and get the coffee going. I’ve been up a few hours, so I’ve already had breakfast, but—”

“But you are my guest, not my housewife,” says Nimueh, and levers herself out of bed. “You go do whatever, and I’ll talk to you in a few minutes when I don’t feel like death badly warmed over.”

“You look it too, if that helps,” says Ygraine, and leaves the bedroom before Nimueh can decide whether or not she’s allowed to throw a pillow at a pregnant woman.

She dawdles in the shower, half because she’s tempted to go back to bed and sleep for another three or four hours and half because she’s trying to come up with arguments against Ygraine, who probably wants to check into a hotel so she can stop “imposing.” Although she might be choosing to go back to Uther, but Nimueh is doing her best not to think about that particular option because she still wants to do horrible things to the man.

Ygraine’s waiting at the table with coffee and toast by the time Nimueh stumbles into her kitchen, at least somewhat refreshed. “Bless you,” she says fervently, picking up the cup. “You didn’t have to, but bless you anyway.” Ygraine doesn’t answer, and after a few more sips, Nimueh puts her cup down and gathers her wits. “So. What happened, the other night?”

“Nothing more than what I told you. Uther told me that Morgana is his daughter and that he’s fond of me, with the strong implication that he never actually loved me. He hasn’t called me since, and as far as I know he’s still in Cornwall, even, because when I went home yesterday morning to pick up some of my things there wasn’t any sign he’d been back.”

Nimueh scoots her chair over so she can put her arm around her, as it looks like she’s going to start crying again. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

“I don’t have many options, Nim. I could go back to my parents, who have enough of their own problems. I could go to Tristan, who’s got a life of his own, or Agravaine, who certainly doesn’t want his sister mucking up his life even if we were close. I could go back to Uther, even though I don’t know if I can go back to him when our whole relationship was apparently a lie.” Ygraine puts her hand over her stomach. “Or I could try to make it on my own, as a single woman with a newborn son, living off alimony and child support until I can find a teaching position that will take someone whose certification is three years old and never-used.”

“You’ve got me.” Nimueh elbows Ygraine gently before she can object. “No, really. I realize I’m still getting paid a pittance and this flat probably seems the side of a postage stamp compared to what you’re used to, but I’m more than willing to have you here—and Arthur, if it comes to that—as long as you like, and at least until you find your feet.”

“Really? You’re willing to have a friend you’re barely reacquainted with sleeping in your bed every night, and in a few months her wailing son in a crib pushed up against a wall so you don’t trip over it? You’d get no sleep, which you desperately need, you’d have to go elsewhere with your girlfriends because I know you’d never ask me to sleep on the couch, your finances would be stretched thin …”

“And, if you choose to divorce Uther, we’d have child support payments to help out, and you’d find a job eventually.” Nimueh forces a smirk. “And it’s not like I’m some lady-killer, you know. Catrina was the first time I pulled in an embarrassingly long time, and I never was one for casual sex anyway. Besides, what you just described sounds a hell of a lot like a relationship to me, just without the sex, and I’m fine with that.”

“But you won’t be forever, and you didn’t sign on to be taking care of a child—someone else’s child, no less—at the age of twenty-five.”

“If I need sex, I’ll take out my vibrator,” snaps Nimueh, and goes red the next second when Ygraine makes a choked sort of noise. “Oh, shit, sorry, I really did just say that, didn’t I?” Ygraine nods. “Well, the point stands. And if you ever found a man who would be good to you and Arthur, or if you found your feet and didn’t want to have a flatmate with a horrid work schedule any longer, well, I wouldn’t stand in your way, and I’ll still be his godmother and your friend.”

“None of this is fair to you, Nim, and you know it. You won’t convince me otherwise.”

“It’s not exactly fair to you, either.” Ygraine just keeps looking at her, and Nimueh sighs and turns to her properly. “I won’t lie and say that this is what I was expecting out of my near future when I woke up the day before yesterday, but that doesn’t mean it has to be bad. I mean, it is for you, and I am absolutely going to hire a hit out on Uther, or at least give him some serious bodily injury, but it’s really not for me. You’re my best friend, and I want to help you, and Arthur is going to be my godson and I adore him already just from the way he kicks. It’ll make things difficult for a while, but …”

She trails off and tries to figure out how to explain the picture in her mind without sounding entirely creepy. Nimueh working at the hospital and eventually being a fully qualified consultant, but in the meantime having awful shifts that would put her awake at just the right times to be up with Arthur sometimes so Ygraine wouldn’t have to. Ygraine getting a job, eventually, and the three of them getting a bigger flat or even a house as Arthur gets older. She stops herself thinking about the amount of bedrooms, because that way lies madness, and finds Ygraine staring at her, a tiny smile growing. “You’re actually serious, aren’t you? You really mean to take me in and keep me if I leave Uther?”

“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?” Nimueh asks, and finds herself wrapped in Ygraine’s arms a second later.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” whispers Ygraine into her hair, and Nimueh thinks she probably ought to be the one saying that.

*

 _I’m leaving Uther._

Nimueh stares at the text that apparently arrived two hours ago, completely ignoring Balinor until he clears his throat loudly. “Miss a call from your live-in girlfriend?” he says when he has her attention again.

“Not my girlfriend, and also I hear you and Hunith almost got caught snogging in a closet, so you really aren’t allowed to throw stones.” She looks back at the text. It still says the same thing.

“Wait, did Hunith tell you that?”

“Yes. I’m terrible at girl talk, she really ought to try one of the nurses.”

Balinor opens his mouth, probably to interrogate her, and then apparently realizes she’s trying to distract him. Damn. “What’s got you so distracted on your phone, Nim? It’s got to have something to do with Ygraine, I know that much.”

“She’s—she texted me to tell me she’s leaving Uther,” Nimueh says, in something of a daze. “I’d like to kill whoever invented the text message, it’s a horrible way to get news.”

“Hippocratic Oath, it’s a thing,” says Balinor with a sigh, and stands up. “You call her, figure out what happened, and I’ll cover for you for a few minutes so you can get all the information.”

“Bless you. I owe you.” To his credit, he doesn’t actually say “you owe me a lot of things” even though she rather does at this point. She figures she’ll repay him in full when he accidentally breaks Hunith’s heart or vice versa, though, so she doesn’t really mind too much. Instead, he waves and walks out of the break room, leaving her with a snoozing ICU nurse, who isn’t even in the right break room but apparently likes theirs better.

Ygraine answers her phone after two rings. “I was wondering when you would get on break. I would have called, but I knew you probably weren’t on break and I wanted you to know, I had to tell someone and I can’t face my family yet, so it was you. I’m sorry. You probably didn’t want to get the news that way.”

“Would you calm down? What happened to make you decide that? You still weren’t sure as of this morning.”

“As of this morning I hadn’t spoken to him yet,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh blinks because she doesn’t think she’s ever heard her sound quite this angry.

“What did he do?”

“He didn’t apologize.” There’s an ominous clang on her end of the line. “He called me and treated me like I was some child having a temper tantrum and asked me to come home and be reasonable, and when I asked if he was at least going to apologize for cheating on me, he just brushed over it like it didn’t even matter.”

“And you?”

“I told him to fuck off, and that he’ll be getting divorce papers as soon as I can get them in the mail. I’ve got enough private funds to pay for a lawyer to be sure he won’t take Arthur away from me just out of spite, and I just can’t …” Something else crashes. “I can’t sit across the dining table from him and pretend nothing’s the matter, I’ll never be able to, because it would have been okay if I thought he even knew it was wrong, so. So I’ll be staying with you for a while, if that’s all right.”

Nimueh clutches the phone. “Of course it’s all right, I said it was already, didn’t I? It’s fine.” Another sound, definitely metal bouncing off metal. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing?”

“I’m making coping cake, but all your cake pans are fucking dented.”

“Oh. Sorry, I don’t really make cake that often. Or ever. I made one for Balinor’s birthday last year so I got some pans at a junk shop and then scrubbed them.”

“Right. I suppose the frosting will cover the weird shapes anyway.” Ygraine takes a shaky breath and Nimueh wants to be there to give her a hug so badly she almost considers telling her supervisor she’s having a family emergency so she can go home. “And then we’ll have chocolate cake when you get home.”

“I’ll be there around eight thirty. Try not to dent my kitchen up too much in the meantime.”

“Thank you, Nim,” says Ygraine, and hangs up.

Nimueh gets home that night exhausted and loaded down with books about a procedure she hasn’t had to do in a year that she’s being observed on in two weeks to find Ygraine waiting with a determinedly cheerful smile and a gorgeously-frosted chocolate cake. They eat three pieces each while watching a film and Nimueh wakes up with a crick in her neck and both of them sleeping on the couch; she packs an extra piece for Balinor when she goes to the hospital, since she owes him anyway.

*

It’s remarkably easy to settle into life with Ygraine as a flatmate. She sees Balinor less, but then again he’s seeing Hunith more and more (and Nimueh tries hard not to be worried about how that is going to end up) so it works out all right, and they’ve still got plenty of time in the break room. Besides, he’s got in the habit of calling Ygraine her wife, so it’s best to avoid him until he’s done being ridiculous.

Suddenly, her flat is ten times cleaner than it ever was, even though it’s growing gradually more clattered with the things Ygraine is choosing to pick up from her old home while Uther’s at work (Uther changed the locks out of spite after he received the divorce papers, but the butler still lets her in without fail). There are meals that aren’t some variation on boiled pasta on the table because with two of them paying the rent there’s money for proper groceries and furniture repair and proper cake pans, since Ygraine _insists_.

Ygraine generally cooks, and Nimueh generally does the dishes, and once a week on whatever day Nimueh is feeling least like a zombie, they do the shopping together. It’s remarkably like being back at school, only Nimueh never shared beds with her roommates at school, and she and Ygraine do most nights, unless one of them passes out on the couch or Nimueh sleeps over at Balinor’s after a piss-up. Most mornings Nimueh wakes up spooned around Ygraine, hand resting on her stomach, and those that don’t, she’s just as likely to wake up with Ygraine’s head tucked into her shoulder. She ignores just how dangerous the situation is getting even when she and Ygraine end up nearly cuddling on the couch every evening Nimueh is home.

It’s not that everything is all sunshine and daisies. Ygraine is miserable most days, even though she tries to put on a cheerful face when Nimueh gets home, and Nimueh’s pretended to be asleep more than once because Ygraine was crying and didn’t want her to know. Uther visits once or twice and condescends until Nimueh throws him out, and he threatens to sue for custody with a significant look around Nimueh’s flat until she takes him aside and tells him very calmly that if he takes Ygraine’s child, she’s going directly to the press with the whole sordid story of the end of his marriage. Ygraine doesn’t ask what their private chat was about, but that’s probably because she doesn’t have to. She gives Nimueh a hug and a “thank you” when Uther’s lawyer mails over papers saying Uther’s only asking for one weekend a month after Arthur is weaned, with visits before that. Nimueh pretends she has no idea what she’s talking about.

Ygraine has a huge argument with her parents when they find out she’s left Uther, which leads to angry voicemails and Tristan constantly on the phone from Paris alternately trying to mediate and threatening to kill Uther and Ygraine blowing up when Nimueh tries to comfort her (and even worse when Nimueh gently attempts to mention pregnancy hormones), leading to three miserable days of them not speaking to each other and Nimueh sleeping on the couch because even when she’s pissed off she’s not going to let a pregnant woman sleep on the sofa.

“All right,” Ygraine says when Nimueh rolls off the couch at five in the morning to get ready for an early shift, waking her up with the crash she makes against the coffee table and bruising up her entire side, “maybe it was the hormones, a bit. Pizza after work?” Nimueh nods, and that’s the closest either of them gets to an apology for it.

They start laying in baby supplies, stuffing Nimueh’s already over-full flat even more, and she stops herself thinking that it’s good she’ll be getting paid more soon and Uther’s child support payments will kick in, as they’re going to need a bigger flat once Arthur gets to crawling. Surely Ygraine will have found someone else by then, even with a baby.

(That doesn’t stop her turning down an offer of a date from Ava, one of the night nurses. She doesn’t even tell Balinor, because he’s started looking at her a bit too knowingly ever since he and Hunith started being whatever the hell they are.)

It’s not exactly what she’d expected to be doing at twenty-five—figured she’d wait on domesticity and children until she was in her thirties and less likely to be working shifts till two in the fucking morning—but she’s surprised herself with how happy she is, being able to make all the plans alongside Ygraine for everything they’ll do with Arthur when he’s born. Happier than she’s been since her mum died, maybe. It’s a lot easier working days-long shifts at the hospital when she knows she’s going home to food in the fridge and maybe a trade of shoulder massages if Ygraine is awake.

Everything settles into an equilibrium until a month before Arthur’s due date, when Ygraine sits up in bed one night when Nimueh was sure she was asleep, gives her a determined look, winds her arms around Nimueh’s neck, and kisses her.

*

Part of Nimueh wants badly for the kiss to be perfect, even while most of her reminds her, loudly, what a horrible idea letting this happen is. It’s not. The lights are out, so Ygraine half-missed her mouth and corrected to an odd angle directly after, and her huge pregnant stomach both gets in the way and serves to remind Nimueh that she is taking advantage of a woman whose marriage just ended in the most horrible of ways. She’s about to pull away when Arthur kicks hard enough that she feels it in her abdomen, and she takes that as his way of saying she ought to stop molesting his mother and pulls back so fast she tumbles off the bed.

They both pant in the dark, and it sounds horribly, hilariously obscene until Ygraine thinks to shift over and turn on the bedside light. Then she’s all backlit and blonde and peering down nervously at Nimueh, though, so it isn’t like the light is helping her desire to kiss Ygraine until neither of them can breathe. “Nim? I’m sorry, did I surprise you? I’ve just—I’ve been psyching myself up to do it for … for a while, so I sort of had to while I had the courage.”

“I don’t need that from you,” blurts Nimueh, which is a horrible way of starting the conversation that they apparently have to have at midnight after a shift full of screaming children and running across Hunith sitting in Balinor’s lap in the on-call room.

“I know it’s not something you’d ever dare bring up—”

Nimueh scoots forward, still on the floor, and grabs Ygraine’s hands. “I don’t need it, Ygraine. I know you feel horribly guilty about invading my flat or whatever and that you think I’ll never get a girlfriend as a result, but this is not something I need from you.”

“Something you need, or something you want?”

“Fuck, are we doing this? Fine, we’re doing this.” Nimueh releases Ygraine to scrub her face with her hands. “Of course I want it, I’m young and gay and not actually _blind_ and I have wanted it since I was seventeen.” Ygraine’s mouth drops open, but Nimueh shakes her head. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right or good for me to have it.”

“Seventeen?” Ygraine manages. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

“It was sort of difficult to bring up, when we were such good friends but hardly ever saw each other. And also, you’re straight and it would have made things horribly awkward.”

“I’m straight? I just kissed you!”

Nimueh makes a series of gestures that should get her medical degree revoked while attempting to indicate Ygraine’s stomach. “Yes, and you’re pregnant! I assume that didn’t happen from a turkey baster!”

“Bisexual, Nim. Just because I’ve never had a girlfriend doesn’t mean I never thought about it. I didn’t mention it before because I was married and it didn’t matter, and I haven’t mentioned it since because things have been a little mad and I didn’t exactly know how to drop it into casual conversation. ‘Oh, good morning, Nim, want some coffee, and by the way, I like women sometimes as well, and specifically you.’”

“No,” says Nimueh, even though she wants to believe it. “You are my best friend, and my flatmate, and unless and until you decide to move on, I’m helping you mother a child, but this isn’t something I need from you. You just left your husband nearly a month ago, you’re having a baby, and this really isn’t the time.”

“Isn’t that my choice as well? You can’t just make it for both of us.”

“I’m making it for myself, though. I don’t want to feel as though I’m taking advantage of you, and even though you’re saying yes, I still feel that way. You can tell me you don’t love Uther anymore and I’ll applaud you because he’s a bastard, you can tell me you’re bisexual and I’ll believe you after I smack you a few times for not telling me, but there’s no conceivable universe where this is a good idea. Not yet, at least.” She closes her eyes, a hundred times more tired now than she was when she tried to get into bed.

“Not yet?”

“There’s too much going on right now. And I may be selfish, but if you said no after saying yes, I’m a little scared of what it would do to us. This is fine for now. This is what I want for now.” When she opens her eyes, Ygraine has leaned back, and Nimueh can’t see her expression anymore.

“Thank you. For not using the pregnancy excuse and saying I’m not thinking clearly because of that,” says Ygraine after a few seconds, sounding horribly blank and making Nimueh want to hug her like she’s done every time Ygraine’s been upset over the past month. That would be cruel, though, after this conversation. “I don’t … I’m not happy, but thank you for that much, at least. And I’m letting you know that I don’t think I’ll change my mind anytime soon. So, if you change your mind.”

“Fuck. Don’t tell me that. I’m not actually a very nice person and I don’t want to ruin this.” Nimueh struggles to her feet and grabs a pillow, and promptly feels like she’s murdered a puppy when she meets Ygraine’s eyes to find her looking stricken. “I’m not mad, I’m absolutely not, and we’ll try to work our way back to normal soon, but believe me when I say I can’t sleep in the same bed as you tonight and still like myself in the morning.”

“Right. Please kill the light when you go,” says Ygraine and rolls away on the bed, settling back under the duvet. Nimueh hits the switch and walks out, pretending she doesn’t hear a sniffle as she goes.

Both of them ignore the other’s red eyes over breakfast out of some tacit agreement and go to buy a crib, since Nimueh’s got the day off.

*

“You’re pretty fucked, you know that?” says Balinor at the hospital the next day.

Nimueh sighs at her coffee, which is sadly alcohol-free. If it wouldn’t make Ygraine feel guilty forever, she would go out somewhere and get properly drunk, but doing it in the wake of their revelations, which neither of them has quite recovered from even though they’re making an effort not to talk about it, seems like a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. “So you think I should have said yes?”

“No.” She blinks at him, because that was really not the answer she’d been expecting, especially with him half in love with Hunith and being a bit soppier than usual (which is still less soppy than the average person, but still). “You’ve both had quite a lot of upheaval in your lives in the last month or so, so while I like Ygraine and think she probably does have feelings for you, it’s probably too early to tell.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Hell if I know, Nim. Just keep on as normal, I suppose. You’ve got a baby coming in a month, neither of you can really afford to have a huge fight at the moment or anything.”

“I should have dated Ava.”

“Or you could just wait a while and have reasonable conversations like an adult until you figure out whether or not you want to give it a shot.”

“God, I hate you. You’re supposed to come up with some brilliant alternate solution to doing that which won’t lead to both of us getting our hearts broken.”

Balinor pauses. “When have I ever done that?”

Nimueh considers the various relationship decisions she’s seen Balinor make since she’s known him, up to and including starting to date an eighteen-year-old when he’s planning to move out to the country in about two years. “You have a point there.” She takes another few gulps of coffee and wonders if she’ll ever sit in the break room again without needing someone to play agony aunt. Judging by the last few months, the answer is no. “Why is this my life? I could have met a nice girl in university and settled down with someone not pregnant with her recently-ex-husband’s child.”

“You met a nice girl before university,” Balinor points out, and finishes his coffee. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do rounds. Try not to drown yourself in your coffee mug.”

“I’m never letting Ygraine cook you dinner again,” she says, voice rising as he leaves the room, and he just laughs like that proves his point.

Nimueh doesn’t get home until six thirty the next morning, but she caught a few hours of sleep in the on-call room, so she’s actually feeling prepared to be a human being. She isn’t prepared, however, for Ygraine to meet her at the door, dressed for the day (which is very rare, Ygraine is fond of sleeping late), carrying her purse, and beaming. “Are you exhausted? I really hope you aren’t. I want to take you out for breakfast.”

“What are we celebrating?” Nimueh manages, before realizing that Ygraine might mean this as a date.

Luckily, Ygraine answers before Nimueh has to find a way to tactfully ask. “I got the call last night, but I wanted to wait and tell you in person. The divorce is finalized—Uther pushed it through. No alimony awarded because my parents are rich, but the child support payments are larger than I was expecting because _he_ is. So we’re free of him, other than visits with Arthur. Thus, breakfast unless you’re too exhausted.”

“For that, breakfast may even be followed by a walk in the park.” Ygraine raises her eyebrows. “I had a lot of coffee in my last few hours at the hospital. I am not going to be able to sleep for quite some time, so I may as well make the most of my energy.”

“You have a horrible relationship with coffee. Especially when Alice keeps gently hinting that I shouldn’t be having any at all as opposed to just cutting down. I’m doing wonderfully on the alcohol, but not so much the coffee.” Nimueh finds herself with Ygraine’s arm through hers walking back down the stairs even though she’d been about to offer to get out of the sweatpants and t-shirt she’s had stuffed in her locker at the hospital for shifts when her scrubs are a complete loss afterwards. There’d been a bit too much vomit, not to mention other substances, and Nimueh had ended up having to borrow a scrub top from one of the nurses, one cheerfully patterned with teddy bears.

“Poor you. I would offer to go cold turkey with you, but then I would probably kill patients, and, if we’re being brutally honest, also you. Nobody has separated me from my coffee mug since my first year at university.” Ygraine laughs, and Nimueh tells her about having to change scrubs, just because she knows she’ll appreciate it.

“I’m getting you a set of scrubs with some ridiculous pattern on them for Christmas,” Ygraine warns when she’s finished laughing. “You want to go into pediatrics, you need something ridiculous to wear for the children sometimes.”

Nimueh retaliates by threatening to get Ygraine holiday sweaters when she starts teaching so all her students will mock her, and everything continues from there, easier than it’s been for days, until they go back to the flat so Nimueh can take a nap and Ygraine can continue to try and fail to knit a pair of baby booties.

*

Embarrassingly enough, it takes Nimueh another week after that to figure out Ygraine is wooing her. They’ve always been affectionate, and since she moved in and doesn’t have a job at the moment, Ygraine does a great deal around the flat. Since she thought they mutually and silently agreed to leave the subject of romance for a while, perhaps even till Arthur is born, she doesn’t really pay attention to extra hugs and cuddling on the couch, her favorite meals on the table, the fact that they’re now starting their nights out spooned together, not just ending that way. They go out to do more than just the shopping, including Nimueh getting dragged along to the signing of the divorce papers and getting glared at by Uther the entire time, and she knows intellectually that all the waitresses and passerby don’t assume they’re friends when Ygraine is always taking her hand or her arm. Balinor has them for dinner at his flat, which Hunith cooks because apparently she’s worried if he keeps eating takeaway five nights of seven and food in the caf the other two he’ll have a heart attack before he’s thirty, and the whole thing feels horribly, wonderfully cozy.

It still takes coming home to find a bouquet of orchids on the table for her to figure it out. They’re bright red, and extravagant in the way that she never admits she enjoys, and Nimueh stares at them for a good five minutes after she walks in the door at five in the morning, having offered to take on a few hours in A&E because they got swamped from a large accident and needed a few extra pairs of hands. “Fuck,” she whispers, because she was completely stupid to think Ygraine gave up for the time being. She might be sweet, but she’s also _stubborn_ , and hard to resist under the best of circumstances. Nimueh has no chance whatsoever. “Shit,” she adds for good measure, and goes to bed.

Ygraine wakes up when she climbs in, of course, because Nimueh’s life can of course never be anything approaching easy. “It’s late, are you just getting home? I thought you got off at midnight.”

“They asked me to stay a few more hours, didn’t you get my text?”

“My phone is in the trash can, I think. At least, that was where it sounded like it landed, I wasn’t really paying attention. I’ll ask you to call it in the morning.” Nimueh does her best to make an inquiring noise while she settles on the bed, only for Ygraine to immediate turn over and curl up around her. “I think Edward got Uther drunk, he called me.”

“I’ll kill him in the morning,” Nimueh promises hazily. Then, “You got me flowers.”

“Is that something lesbians don’t do? I don’t really know the etiquette. I just wanted to get you flowers.”

They should probably have another disgustingly mature conversation about how Ygraine just got divorced and Nimueh doesn’t want to be a rebound, but she’s too exhausted for that. Instead, she rests a hand on Ygraine’s stomach and closes her eyes. “They’re very pretty. I’m still not kissing you yet.”

“That’s okay, we’ve got time,” says Ygraine, and then Nimueh is falling asleep properly and misses it if she says anything more.

The flowers look a lot more ominous in the light of day, but Nimueh can’t help smiling when she sees the arrangement over breakfast (which for her actually happens at noon, while Ygraine is eating lunch). It makes Ygraine beam at her, and she steels herself while she brews coffee and pours a bowl of cold cereal because she hasn’t got the energy for anything else. “I’m not expecting anything from you. Everything’s gone a bit mad, and you don’t need to woo me to make me love you, or whatever. That’s …” She barely manages to keep from saying right out that loving her is a done deal, but it comes through anyway. “We just need time to make sure. Or I do.”

“I know you don’t expect anything, and that’s what makes me _want_ to do ridiculous things like carry a bouquet that big halfway across London on the Underground and call Balinor for advice—”

“You didn’t.”

“Of course not, but I considered it.” Ygraine smiles at her. “The point is, I like doing things for you, that’s all. Time is fine.”

Nimueh shoves a bite of cereal in her mouth and prays without much actual hope that Ygraine doesn’t notice her turning bright red. She leaves the subject alone, but she makes a point out of opening doors for Ygraine and putting her favorite chocolate in the basket when they go out to shop for groceries.

*

Ygraine ends up in the hospital with what they discover are Braxton Hicks two weeks before her due date, and Nimueh misses the whole thing. Alice pops her head in when Nimueh is heading towards the cafeteria for lunch. “Are you on your way to see Ygraine?”

“What?” Nimueh cries, and barely gets the room number out of Alice before she’s tearing off to where Ygraine is chatting with a few nurses, back in her own clothes and looking rattled under her smile. “What happened?” she asks, half out of breath.

As luck would have it, Ava is one of the nurses in the group, and she gives Nimueh a wry, overly-understanding look that probably means something mortifying like _You could have just told me you had a pregnant girlfriend_. “Why don’t you two stay in here for a few minutes, sort yourselves out? We don’t need the bed just yet.”

“Thanks, Ava,” says Nimueh, and stares uselessly at Ygraine while they clear out, clucking collectively in that faintly disapproving, fond way that only nurses seem to be able to manage. “Alice said you were here but I didn’t get the chance to ask why, what the fuck.”

“I think I’d like a hug, please,” Ygraine replies in a small voice, and Nimueh goes over to her without a second thought and wraps her right up. “It was just some false contractions. I texted you while I was on my way, but I figured I could have them page you if I actually went into labor.”

“Definitely. If I’m here when you do, have them page me, or get me somehow. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Ygraine exhales shakily into her shoulder. “Now, are you okay? You seem pretty upset.”

“Having one of my bouts of periodic terror over bringing a child into the world. I’ve been avoiding them recently because I’ve had other things to worry about.” Nimueh just nods and keeps on holding her. “And what if I’m not even there? My mum nearly died with me, and when Uther and I were trying to get pregnant the doctors said it was extremely lucky when I did because I’m not very fertile, and—”

Nimueh puts on her best doctor voice. “Everything is going to be fine. Alice keeps telling you this is a textbook pregnancy, and false contractions are normal. You and Arthur are going to walk out of this hospital and come back to our tiny little flat where neither of us will get enough sleep for the next several years, and we’ll take care of him and make Hunith babysit when you decide you’re ready to find a job, and deal with Uther probably trying to turn the poor boy into a miniature businessman. And it will all be lovely.”

Ygraine laughs a bit and pulls back, looking slightly less panicky. “God, Uther absolutely will, won’t he? We’re going to have to spend all our time assuring Arthur he can be an astronaut if that’s what he wants because Uther will be buying him bank playsets.”

“Do they even make bank playsets?”

“They do, it’s awful. If Uther gets him one, we’re accidentally breaking it.”

“Am I allowed to get him a doctor playset?”

“I suppose so, as long as he also gets dinosaurs and building blocks and whatever else he wants.”

“And Hunith will knit him stuffed toys because she seems the sort to do that and Balinor will drop him on his head a lot until Hunith teaches him better for when they have their own inevitable brood of brats. I’m sorry, Arthur is inevitably the test child. We’ll screw him up royally, but if we’re lucky, he’ll love us anyway. You’ll be his beloved mum and I’ll be his cool Aunt Nim who takes him to fun parks and patches up his skinned knees before you kiss them better.”

“You’ll just be Nim, if you won’t take on a mum-ish sort of name, I’ve always found people who ask their children to call their significant others Aunt or Uncle to be ridiculous.”

Nimueh opens and closes her mouth a few times before deciding not to argue that. Just because she can’t let them do it yet, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t suspect it’s sort of inevitable. “Just Nim, then. I refuse to let him call me mum, we’ll just confuse the lad like that.”

“Very well, then.” Ygraine takes a deep breath before finally pulling back a bit and smiling at her. “If we can pull it off, it won’t be such a bad life.”

“Not a bad one at all,” says Nimueh, and steps out of the hug because she’s still meant to be working. If they keep standing there like that, eventually they’re going to start kissing, and she doesn’t want to get in trouble for that. “And, now that we’re finished with that, I’m actually glad you’re here, because I was going to talk to you about this when I got home, but I might have a job for you until you get your teaching certification brushed up and current.”

Ygraine smiles and smoothes down her shirt. “I swear, you’re my fairy godmother or something. Tell me about the job.”

“The pediatric ward is always hiring tutors, for the kids who are in there for longer than others, to keep them caught up on their school work. You don’t need a teaching certification, but they’ll see yours and practically cry with happiness. You’re a shoo-in, once you’re ready to leave Arthur for a few hours at a time, and he would probably be able to stay in the hospital daycare, especially as he’s … part mine.”

That makes Ygraine beam at her as Nimueh finally drags her out of the room because the nurses will only give them so long and there’s already going to be gossip all over the hospital. Especially since Nimueh probably ran out of break time five minutes ago. “That sounds perfect. Am I allowed to apply and go directly to maternity leave?”

“I’m afraid not, but I’ve got to get back down to the ward anyway, and I can drop you by the admin office on the way so you can get your name in. Dr. Jones will adore you, she gets sick of the uni students who generally apply.”

Ava winks at her as they walk by, and Nimueh does her best to ignore it.

*

“Doctor Lake,” says her supervisor a week later, and Nimueh looks up from lying to a child about vitamins being just like candy. “Your girlfriend is screaming down the gynecology ward asking for you. It didn’t occur to you to ask for some time off?”

“Wait, she’s what?” asks Nimueh, straightening up and going immediately into panic mode. “She’s a week early! And I’m sorry. About not asking for the time. I sort of assumed that since we aren’t married I wouldn’t get any.”

“We’ll work it out. Now, you’re off for the rest of your shift, get over there.”

Nimueh manages something garbled that she hopes sounds like thanks, and runs. Alice catches her the second she runs into gyno. “Thank God. Get in there with me and tell her to breathe properly, or she’s going to hyperventilate. Contractions are still about six minutes apart and she’s got several centimeters yet to dilate, nothing abnormal so far.”

“Right, good,” says Nimueh, following down the hallway behind her and hearing Ygraine, obviously in the throes of another contraction, halfway down it.

Most significant others of pregnant woman giving birth, Nimueh considers when she enters the room to find Ygraine red-faced and hospital-gowned, panting out the last of her contraction while a nurse hooks her up to a heart monitor, don’t have the benefit of gynecology training. At the moment, she can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. She repairs to the head of the bed so she doesn’t get tempted to start acting as acting physician instead of moral support and takes the hand that Ygraine holds out. “Ah, fuck, contractions hurt, can I change my mind and have a C-section?” Ygraine asks, though she doesn’t really sound serious.

The nurse mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “wasn’t so cooperative ten minutes ago” and Alice coughs. “I’m afraid you can’t, not as long as it’s going well,” says Nimueh, as apologetically as she can manage. “Did you call anyone before you left for hospital? Uther’s not due back from New York until tomorrow, but—”

“I texted him—ow, fuck—in the taxi on my way over, Balinor knows because I called Hunith because her parents have a car, but they’re using it today so she couldn’t give me a ride, I called Tristan and he said he would take care of Mum and Dad, is that everyone?”

“Everyone urgent, at least.” Nimueh kisses her on the forehead. “You look miserable.”

“The real reason babies are adorable is because otherwise their mothers would _hate_ them.”

“That’s … actually a really good theory.” Ygraine’s face twists up with another contraction. “They’re getting closer together pretty quickly, then?”

Alice interrupts. “Seems like it.”

Ygraine kisses their clasped hands quickly when she comes down. “They’re much better with you here, but I’m afraid I’m going to be a complete childbirth cliché and break your hand.”

“You’d better not, I need this to work and I’m already getting glared at for not asking for time off.”

One of the nurses pulls up a chair eventually, because Ygraine’s contractions seem to have leveled off some now that Nimueh has arrived and she still isn’t fully dilated. They chat about nothing in particular for the next while, while nurses wander in and out, and Alice does the same, though Ygraine is the only woman on the ward actively giving birth at the moment so when she’s out it seems mostly to be to give them privacy.

Eventually, though, the contractions start overlapping more and more and Alice and the nurses start murmuring at each other. Nimueh reminds herself that she is not a midwife or doctor on the case and she’s here as moral support, not to deliver the baby, and keeps half-crooning nonsense about what they’re going to do with Arthur once he’s born, including some horribly ridiculous things about keeping him away from little girls like Guinevere because of course his name is going to be some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Ygraine doesn’t pay much attention to her nonsense as she’s too busy swearing and threatening to marry Uther again just so she can divorce him again (which makes the nurses double-take) because she apparently has the lowest pain threshold in the world.

Alice interrupts their little world after who-knows-how-long, giving Nimueh a smile that’s just a shade more amused than it is sympathetic. “Ygraine, are you ready? You’ve got to breathe properly and push now, do you understand?”

“Right, pushing,” says Ygraine, and _wails_.

Things get gory from there, and Nimueh’s medical training comes in handy because she knows better than to look at how things are going and just keeps her eyes trained on Ygraine, who is panting and crying and too worn out to shout any more by the time Alice says “Come on, darling, one more big push, we can see the head, we just need you to get it out and it’s all downhill from there.”

A few big pushes, a few more sobs out of Ygraine, a few more encouragements from the nurses, and one “ow, fuck fuck fuck, you’re going to break my hand for real, _stop that_ ” later, there’s a sudden bustle of motion in the room that Nimueh can’t interpret through trying to mop the tears off Ygraine’s face until there’s a sharp cry and Ygraine straightens right up. “Give him here, I want to hold him,” she says, sounding exhausted but holding her arms out anyway.

“Just let us cut the cord,” says Alice, and Nimueh makes a point of distracting Ygraine, scattering kisses all over her face and telling her how well she’s done, because she’s never met a mother who liked the indignant, unhappy sounds her baby made while the cord was cut. Arthur’s certainly got a healthy set of lungs, and he uses them while the nurses clean him off efficiently and swaddle him up in a blanket to hand him to Ygraine, shifting her up on the pillows so she can take him properly.

“Oh,” Ygraine whispers, touching him gently on the nose, and he stops crying abruptly, looking more affronted than any baby has the right to, and staring up at her. He’s just as squished and blotchy and gorgeous as every other baby Nimueh’s seen in this hospital, with bright blue eyes and the beginnings of blond hair. “Oh, isn’t he lovely?”

“He’s going to look just like you,” Nimueh manages around the lump of sentimentality in her throat. This is her family, for now and maybe, if she’s very lucky, for the rest of her life, and Ygraine might be the one who just gave birth and they might not even officially be dating yet, but that’s her son too. “Hello, Arthur,” she adds, and he gives her a suspicious glare before going back to staring at his mother.

When Nimueh looks up at Ygraine, she’s smiling at her. “Are we done waiting now?”

Nimueh brushes her thumb over Arthur’s head and gives Ygraine a kiss, a proper one this time, and doesn’t care that they’re both disgusting and tired and sweaty, since she figures that will be their default setting until Arthur’s sleeping through the night, or possibly eighteen. “We’re done waiting,” she says, and turns to Alice when she clears her throat.

*

There’s hot soup on the stove when the three of them get home from the hospital two days later, because Balinor has no compunctions whatsoever about giving Hunith the spare key to Nimueh’s flat. Not that Nimueh minds, as otherwise she’d have to cook and she’s feeling overwhelmed and strangely fluttery, a bit like when she has to show a guest her flat for the first time, which is stupid because Arthur is still looking hazily at the world when he isn’t crying or sleeping and doesn’t know the place is tiny. “Welcome home,” she tells him, even though he’s asleep, wrapped in a baby blanket Hunith actually knitted for them in Ygraine’s arms. “Want some soup?” she asks his mum, who’s beaming around like she’s been away for years and not days.

“Please. I’ll set Arthur up in his carrier at the table so I don’t have to hold him, he’s due for a feed soon.”

Nimueh ladles out some soup, wondering when she actually developed a ladle. She suspects Ygraine is behind that. Once they’re all served up and Arthur’s been gently transferred into his carrier, they sit and stare stupidly at each other over the table, Ygraine shifting uncomfortably in her seat as she’s been doing for the past few days. “Hi,” she says just as Nimueh is beginning to worry about the silence stretching out.

“Hi.”

They beam stupidly at one another, which neither of them can seem to help doing. Balinor came to visit while they were both in the room and laughed until Alice stopped by and kicked him out, but he later texted Nimueh told her he’d rallied the other foundation year students to take her shifts over for the next week, which means he approves, in his own way. “I feel as if we ought to be doing something terribly romantic and not family-friendly at all,” Ygraine admits after a few more seconds of silence, “but frankly, the thought of sex at the moment makes me want to cringe.”

Nimueh has to bit her fist when Arthur starts making unhappy noises at her laughter. “Don’t worry, we’ve got time for that. Mind you, it might have to wait until we can leave Arthur with someone else, because with only one bedroom things are going to be horrible, but will you think I’m ridiculous if I say that doesn’t really matter to me yet?”

“Not at all. I thought I was going to have to wait until Arthur was toilet-trained or something before you would give in, so having you at all is amazing.”

“It’s probably still too soon, but I don’t care anymore. It’s probably all these maternal hormones.”

“What maternal hormones? You practically throw him at me whenever he starts to cry.”

“Because he’s always hungry! He is going to eat us out of house and home when he’s a teenager.”

Ygraine just smiles. “Yes, but by then you’ll be a rich doctor and I’ll be making actual money that isn’t just child support, so we’ll have plenty of money to feed him.” She eats several spoonfuls of soup before making a face. “Well, Hunith means well.”

“She’s eighteen and a better cook than I am, I’m really not going to complain.” Nimueh tastes it and deems it better than any of the soup from a can she would be heating up. “Is Helen a good cook? Maybe when she and Tristan come we can make them cook for us.”

“Tristan’s actually an excellent cook, he dated a culinary student at university. I don’t know about Helen. Either way, though, I’ll be using them more as buffers between Uther and me than kitchen workers.”

Nimueh makes a face. “Is he still coming back from New York and coming right over tomorrow? And what kind of father doesn’t end his business trip early when his son is born?”

“The kind I got divorced from,” says Ygraine, rolling her eyes. “And you’ll be polite. He’s good with kids, he’s just horrible with wives. Perhaps Viv and I can get together and have the kids play when Arthur gets past the point of being fascinated with his own feet.” Nimueh gives her an incredulous look. “He should grow up knowing his sister, even if I’d love to strangle Viv.”

“I suppose.” Ygraine shakes her head and leans over to give her a quick kiss. “Sure we can’t just have Viv offed and start up a collection home for Uther’s illegitimate children? We could take Morgause in as well, I suppose, even if she is a terrifying little girl. I think I’d be better with girls than boys.”

“Shut up, you’re going to be wonderful with him. He’ll undoubtedly like you better.”

“He’ll love us both.”

Arthur picks that moment to wake up and start making snuffly, confused, edge-of-tears noises that Ygraine cuts off by picking him up and cuddling him against her chest. “Good morning, darling. Were we being too noisy? Are you hungry?”

“Just lonely, looks like,” says Nimueh, because Arthur’s quieted right down again now that he’s with his mum and the whole thing is almost painfully lovely. She’s going to have problems if she gets this soppy every time she sees Ygraine holding Arthur.

“Oh, good, then you hold him, I’m starving,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh holds her arms out automatically and gets an armful of Arthur, who seems rather sanguine about the transfer. He’s got used to her over the past few days, and probably thinks of her as the large person who doesn’t feed him (thereby distinguishing her from the large person who _does_ feed him).

Nimueh stares at him stupidly for a few seconds, and he returns the favor before deciding that it’s much more interesting to flail an arm free of his blanket and attempt to grasp her hair. His fists don’t quite work yet, so she leaves him to it, shaking her hair into closer reach for him before looking back up at Ygraine. Who is smiling at Nimueh just as indulgently as Nimueh was smiling at her a minute ago. Obviously this is a problem they share. “I love you,” she says. “And you,” she adds when Arthur manages something somewhat resembling a tug on her hair.

“I am so glad I found you again,” says Ygraine, and Nimueh smiles at her helplessly until Arthur decides he isn’t getting enough attention and starts crying. She breaks the moment and bounces him gently in his arms, making the ridiculous cooing noises she used to judge parents for. They’ve got plenty of time to say everything they need to say.


End file.
